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An opera in four acts by Auckland Giacomo Puccini. Libretto ASB Theatre by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Aotea Centre September 13, 15, 19, 21 Giacosa, based on Scènes at 7.30pm de la Vie de Bohème by September 23 at 2.30pm Henri Murger. La bohème Wellington premiered on 1 February Opera House 1896 at the Teatro Regio October 4, 6, 11 at 7.30pm in Turin. The performance October 9 at 6.30pm lasts approximately two October 13 at 5pm hours and twenty minutes, including a twenty minute interval. Sung in Italian with English surtitles. A New Zealand Opera production. Please Note: Information is correct at the time of printing. New Zealand Opera reserves the right to make alterations to the cast as required due to unavoidable circumstances. Use of cameras, mobile phones and recording devices is strictly prohibited. Latecomers will not be admitted until a suitable break in the performance. 1 2 WELCOME In 1985/6 I found myself living in Paris with very little to rub together. A student living in an apartment with wonderful prospects – centrally located in the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre opposite Le Palace nightclub – but lacking certain basics such as hot running water, heating, lighting and a bed. The cash I had arrived with to see me through for a We are delighted this evening to present a new month I blew in one night in a gluttonous adventure production of the opera, marking Jacqueline Coats’ at Chez Flo. I didn’t mind. There was no rent to pay. mainstage directing debut for the Company and the I was able to blag 20 cigarettes a day in under return of Tobias Ringborg following his fine work on 30 minutes. I partied with countesses and terrorists. NZO’s Tosca in 2015. It is heartening to see a large And I fell in love. And it all fell apart. And I left. number of performers and creatives returning to work with us and that this is matched by the number of Not all bohemian adventures begin in Paris artists making their debut with the Company. but this one does. It is inspired by the real life adventures of Henri Murger who drafted a series The bohemian myth is both personal and a shared of magazine sketches about the bohemian lifestyle consciousness. Enjoy sharing this beautiful work in into a novel, Scenes de la Vie de Bohème (1851). the company of others. The Bohemian life took its toll on him, and he died - young. Puccini’s La bohème premiered in 1896, Nga mihi nui, and its setting shocked. A hundred years later, the work was adapted by Jonathan Larson into the Broadway musical, Rent. Both the opera and the Thomas de Mallet Burgess musical revolutionised their respective art forms. General Director, New Zealand Opera The enduring popularity of these works hint at our fascination with the subject matter and perhaps the secret desire we have to be free of boundaries. 3 4 5 LA BOHEME: A PLACE WHERE BEAUTY EXISTS “In my dreams and reveries I build There is a late-19th century influence to the costumes and look, consistent with the period in castles in the air,” the poet Rodolfo which Puccini wrote the piece, rather than the 1830s tells Mimì in Act I of Giacomo Puccini’s in which he set it. Accordingly, the silhouettes are La bohème. Director Jacqueline Coats turn-of-century and the staging was initially inspired by Paris in winter, the angles of the Eiffel Tower and knows the importance of that reflection. the sloped walls of Parisian garrets, but Rachael All of her productions start with what Walker says the effect is painterly and symbolic, she calls a “dreaming stage”. rather than naturalistic. The monochromatic environment contrasts with the principal singers, “That’s when you come up with all your crazy whose costumes inject colour. schemes,” she says. “Visually, we’ve created the world of the bohemians – The dreaming for this production of La bohème the poetic beauty of their imaginations – as opposed began more than a year ago, when Jacqueline and to the time of the bohemians,” Rachael explains. “It’s the creative team – set designer Rachael Walker, a place where beauty exists”. costume designer Elizabeth Whiting and lighting Jacqueline is well-known for her work on adventurous designer Jennifer Lal – were given a deceptively productions, such as the mini-opera The Eagle simple brief: be beautiful. Has Landed, by New Zealand composer Anthony Eye of the beholder stuff, of course, but what could Ritchie, staged recently in Wellington as part of the be more beautiful than love? CubaDupa festival. La bohème is a significantly bigger affair and while Jacqueline’s process remains “When you fall for someone, the way you essentially unchanged – dreaming stage and experience your surroundings changes,” says all – she’s aware of the opera’s fêted history and the Jacqueline. “I wanted to express the way the world responsibility that brings. is transformed when you’re in love.” “In some ways working with a well-known opera Also emerging from the dreaming stage was the is trickier; there’s a higher expectation because so idea of timelessness. Love is timeless, and so is many people know and love La bohème, which La bohème’s story, reasons Jacqueline, which is brings pressure. And you can’t escape seeing other why this production is not set in a particular era. directors’ imagery. However, I have to put that aside and always come back to the story, the characters “ I don’t want the audience to get too tied up in and the music.” period,” she says. “Instead of being distracted by whether we’re using a period candlestick, you get Ah, the music. One of the hallmarks of opera is that more engaged with the plot and the characters.” there are equal creative forces at play. Conductors 6 and directors often have similarly strong visions about what the music says and does. “Yes,” says Jacqueline, “and I try to develop a strong working relationship with conductors. I’ve worked with some fabulous collaborative conductors who are interested in how characters are portrayed and can give a lot of support musically and through the text to enhance those characters. I’ve been the assistant director with Tobias Ringborg before and I know he is very interested in how things are portrayed on stage.” Rachael’s designs are integral to that cohesion. “The music has an emotion; you get a feeling,” she says. “Is it colourful, is it monochromatic, is it round, is it angular, is it happy or sad? Anything visual is matched to that to help the audience’s appreciation of the opera.” Don’t expect an over-emphasis of the opera’s tragedy, though. As Jacqueline notes, there is as much happy as there is sad in La bohème. “It’s easy to get sucked in to the sadness of the piece, that Mimì is sick and dying, but every time I go back to listen to the music, I’m reminded how humorous and joyous La bohème is – the joy of the bohemians, and of their friendship, and them making a life of art in Paris. That’s the power of the music. As a director it’s your best friend; it tells you everything you need to know.” Richard Betts Award-winning Auckland writer 7 8 LA VIE BOHEME Debussy is said to have remarked that no-one had represented the Paris of the 1830s as well as Puccini in La bohème. This was high praise from a Frenchman at a time when musical nationalism was reaching a cultural fever pitch. Puccini was not the only Italian of his day to be drawn to Henri Murger’s 1851 novel Scènes de la Vie de Bohème: Merely a year after Puccini’s opera premiered in Turin, an alternative version ‘bohemian’ class of impoverished and marginalised of La bohème by Puccini’s compatriot Ruggero artists was born, at once beneficiaries of Paris’s Leoncavallo opened in Venice. There was something cultural flowering and victims of its social ills. about the bohemians of 1830s Paris that fascinated both Puccini and Leoncavallo, two leading Bohemians were so named because they lived proponents of verismo, or operatic realism. Indeed, in suburbs traditionally occupied by the Romani Murger’s coterie of starving artists was the ideal people, who were mistakenly believed to have subject for both composers in their pursuit of a originated from Bohemia. One such neighbourhood, grittier, more true-to-life operatic style. the Latin Quarter on Paris’s Left Bank – where La bohème’s second act is set – gained a reputation In many ways, bohemianism personifies the best for its lively bohemian community. The Left Bank’s and the worst aspects of Parisian society in the cafés were central to Parisian bohemian life. Henri 1830s. Following the fiscal upheaval of the Murger himself routinely frequented the real-life Napoleonic wars, the restoration of the French Café Momus, which, with its notoriously low prices, monarchy in 1815 ushered in an era of relative became a regular bohemian haunt. Bohemians peace and economic stability. An emerging class were known for their anti-establishment beliefs and of bankers, industrialists and luxury retailers were unconventional behaviour, a trope that was heavily driving Paris’s financial and infrastructural growth: romanticised in nineteenth-century popular culture During this period, the city gained its first public (in La bohème, Puccini virtually glorifies the transport system, street lighting, department stores bohemians’ refusal to pay both their rent and their bill and public toilets. With this economic growth at Café Momus).

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